A local tech training company asked my boss to come in and be a part of a panel at a little conference they were holding. He came back with the impression that

A local tech training company asked my boss to come in and be a part of a panel at a little conference they were holding. He came back with the impression that they teach a lot of how to code, maintain servers, etc, but nothing about version control, refactoring, test driven development, etc. At my last job I sat in on a few interviews and we always asked them to do a few simple programming tasks, just to give us an idea of whether or not they knew anything at all. I felt kinda silly asking them to do really easy stuff, but the ones who could do it didn't mind at all, and the ones that couldn't...well I'm glad I asked. When I interviewed for my current job the lead developer had me come in for a second interview and sit down for an hour or so and write a quick little Django application. Basic stuff, create an app with a login, file upload, list entries, etc. It gave me confidence knowing that I would be working with people who expected that I already know this.